June 9 – Portland and Cape Elizabeth

It was another nice day so we put the bike on the car and headed into Portland. They have a ton of bike paths around town so we parked the car on sort of the north edge and first biked back into town.

The city has a narrow gauge railway that run around the edge of town on the waterfront. Normally anyone can get a ticket and get on.

This morning a wedding used it to take everyone out into the park for the ceremony.

We rode across the waterfront which was very industrial with wharves and shipping companies. I noticed that this bridge had bike lanes on it.

So we went across and back to see what the view was like.

Lots of tank farms on one side.

And downtown on the other.

As we retraced our steps we noticed that there was a lot of traffic for a Sunday morning and the parking lots had “event” parking rates posted. It turns out that the 40th Annual Old Port Festival was on today. A large city block worth of about 10 streets were blocked off and filled with craft and food booths. We were a bit hesitant to wade into the crush of people with the bike but we don’t like to lock it and leave it anywhere because of all the bags we have on it. So in we went.

 

Since it was around lunch time we tried to find something interesting to eat, even though we had packed a lunch. If we were going to pay extra high prices it had to be unusual. We came up empty so we settled for another lobster roll. There was a Korean place, a Mexican place and a few Indian ones but mostly it was this:

This one even made veggies unhealthy.

This van was giving out free samples.

We got back on the bike and headed past our parking spot north to do a short 3 mile loop called the Back Cove Trail around a large bay

The description said that there were good views of downtown but we were kind of far away.

Back at the car we had only ridden about 20 km but we had another destination to see today because we are leaving tomorrow. We drove about 10 km south of Portland to Cape Elizabeth near Two Lights State Park. There are two lighthouses here but they are privately owned so you can’t get that close to them.

The most interesting thing was the shoreline.

 

The rocks were very strange. Everyone thought that it was petrified wood.

We were standing there just watching the waves crash in when all of a sudden the fog horn went off.

It was right behind us and there was no sign of fog anywhere. We certainly jumped.

This guy was fishing,

I guess a bit too close to the surf. He didn’t move a bit.

Someone had a nice estate out on a point. I wonder what it is like in the winter, although they probably winter elsewhere.

We spent a long time just sitting and staring at the waves.

We got a bit cool so we headed back to pack up for our move tomorrow.